


Fianna

by uschickens



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale pastiche, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Presumed Dead, Tam Lin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-05
Updated: 2010-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 11:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uschickens/pseuds/uschickens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean counts the years without Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fianna

The day Dean finally accepted that Sam was gone - really, truly gone - he got into the car and started driving south from Vermont. He left at three a.m., leaving everything behind in the motel. He stopped screaming somewhere in New York, mostly because his voice was shot.

He drove for twenty-four hours straight, finally pulling over on the side of an exit ramp just across the Oklahoma border, wedging the Impala into a lineup of long-haul trucks, their running lights casting long, faint shadows in the darkness of the backseat. He slept until dawn, then drove straight off the exit ramp onto the entrance ramp and kept going.

By the time he was on the far side of Elk City, he had stopped sobbing, dry, wracking heaves shaking his body with no tears. Six hours later, he pulled into a truckstop. He snuck into the shower, stole two apples, and paid for a cup of coffee. By ten o'clock, he was in Flagstaff, dark and empty. The canyon pulled him north, and he went, slowly but surely.

He arrived just before sunrise, dodged the rangers, and planted himself on the very rim. It was colder than he had expected, his breath showing itself in short, sharp gusts. He watched the creeping light sweep away darkness and leave a riot of colors stretching a mile down. He watched the immense hole in the ground skitter and shake itself alive, creatures large and small going on about their morning business. He watched and did nothing.

When the pinks and reds of dawn faded to the clear, sharp blue of a winter morning, he stood and dusted himself off. He walked back to the car and pointed her east. He didn't look back.

It was February 1. Three months since Sam had disappeared.

 

***

 

Six months after Sam disappeared for good, the hellhounds came for Dean. He heard them long before they got to the cabin; the Beasts of Hell weren't exactly subtle. They hurled themselves against the door again and again, shaking the whole frame.

Dean ignored them for a good long while; the cabin was warded and sealed as best he knew how. Finally, in the middle of dinner, he slammed his fork down. "Fuck this," he muttered. "Puttin' me off my appetite." He grabbed the shotgun from where it lay next to the salt shaker and stalked to the door.

Timing it, he yanked open the door as the next hound threw itself doorwards, momentum carrying it across the threshold and into the line of goofer dust. The dog _screamed_ and collapsed like a masterless puppet, dead for the moment. Dean grinned without mirth and kicked its corpse aside. Hellhounds couldn't cross goofer not because of any protection powers it had; they couldn't cross it because it killed. Mostly they were smart enough to avoid the temporary inconvenience of their own death. Mostly.

The wind picked up as Dean crossed over the doorframe, pumping the shotgun and raising it to his shoulder in one smooth motion. The remaining hellhounds looked up from the corpse of their packmate, gore dripping down their muzzles. The growl started deep and hard; Dean just kept on grinning.

"Bring it on, mutts; got no time to play with you. One of you better tell your Gozer I got business with her," Dean said, low and sing-songy, taunting like a playground bully. He shot the first hound in the face as it leapt at him; not enough to kill it, the impact threw it back to the ground, whimpering. Dean pumped the shotgun again.

"No need to call me ugly names, darling boy. You didn't think I'd miss this, did you?" The demon sauntered out of the darkness, tall, male, and insufferably smug. Dean didn't flinch. The resemblance wasn't that great, and Dean had forced himself to stop looking for the familiar arch of cheekbone, the familiar flop of too-long hair, the familiar trick of gait, the familiar _anything_ about three months in.

The demon arched a brow, not at all familiarly. "What, no compliments on the new meatsuit? I picked it especially for you." It even did a little twirl, no doubt deliberately turning its back on Dean.

"Nah," said Dean. "Just about as ugly as I expected. Can we get on with this?"

It shook its head. "Dean, Dean, Dean - you're no _fun_ anymore. I think the fire has gone out of our relationship - no snap, no _pizzazz_. Didn't you enjoy your year?" Its smile curved sharp and hard. "Am I not merciful?"

Dean didn't bother to dignify that with an answer.

The demon sighed. "Well, if you're not going to play, then I suppose we should just get on with this, then. Too bad, really. I like it when they fight, and I think you might have fought best of all." It beckoned to Dean. "Come close and give us a kiss; it won't even hurt that much."

"No," Dean said.

"Excellent!" The demon beamed. "You _are_ going to fight. I am going to enjoy this."

"You hold my contract? You're the boss?" Dean asked, deliberately stepping out of the demon's personal space.

"In the flesh," it said, spreading its host's arms wide. "My sweet girl might have made the deal, but I'm here to collect."

"No," Dean repeated. "I've decided to break my contract."

"Oh, Dean." The demon shook its head. "I really expected more from you. Calling my bluff? Sweetheart, that only works if there is an actual _bluff_ involved. I will quite happily kill your Sam and take your soul, too. Why not just come quietly like a good boy and make sure Sam dies of old age?" It cocked its head. "Or eats his gun, too overcome with guilt over not saving his precious, saintly brother - whichever comes first." It hummed in contemplation. "I hope he uses the Colt. That would have a lovely symmetry, don't you think?"

Dean shrugged. "Kill him. But I'm not going with you. Not now. Deal's off."

"My darling, darling boy. I really do think you mean it," the demon said, almost wondering.

Dean shrugged again.

Before Dean could do anything else, the demon spoke a word his ears would not hear, his brain refused to understand. The sound did not travel through air, but Dean could feel it in the bones of his skull. Reflexively, he dropped the shotgun and clutched his head, for all the good it didn't do.

The demon brushed an invisible bit of lint off its shoulder. "Wherever you've stashed dearest Samuel, he's dead now. Dreadfully sorry." It paused, then positively giggled. "And you're still mine."

"Yeah, no, not really," Dean said, uncurling. "You pretty much screwed that pooch yourself."

The demon shrugged delicately. "You _did_ ask for it, my dear."

"Exactly. Deal's off. Contract broken. I tried to get out of the deal, and you went for the no-take-backs option. You killed Sam, and my year's not up yet. I got -" Dean checked his watch "- a good forty-five minutes left. You ain't got shit."

"I _will_ have your soul, Dean Winchester," the demon snarled, slipping out of amusement into anger in the blink of a red eye. "Killing Sammy was just a bonus. Something else to torment you with until this universe folds up on itself and swallows us all." It smiled again, crooked and wrong. "That's a really, really long time, in case you're counting."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Then come and get me, you son of a bitch."

The demon's face twisted and _stretched_ , in a way faces weren't. It reached for Dean with a noiseless, world-bending shriek, but this time Dean's grip was firm. In the space between noise and not-noise, Dean drew the Colt and shot the demon through the heart.

The world shuddered back onto its normal track, and Dean shot the demon in the head. It gathered itself and tried to escape, even as it was dying, and Dean shot it in the face, obliterating all familiarity and the last cloud of sticky, black smoke that blew against the wind.

Somewhere along the line, the hellhounds had slunk away, even the partially eaten one. All that was left was a dark, matted spot on the grass. Dean walked over to the cabin's door, step by careful step, and eased himself down to the ground. He sat there, Colt cradled loosely in his hands, for another hour just to be sure. The demon's host body didn't move. Nothing else approached him. Nothing else stirred in the night.

"So that's that," he muttered. He didn't look angry or relieved or anything else; he just looked tired. He heaved himself to his feet and went back inside and closed the door.

Just after dawn, he came back out with gas tank and lighter in hand. He grabbed the salt from the Impala just for the hell of it, then fell in the easy habit of salting and burning. Before he dropped the match, he studied the ruined face of the demon's host.

"Can't kill what's already gone, you dumb motherfucker," he said, then kicked dirt over the mangled features. He flicked the match and watched the body catch, then turned his back and walked away.

 

***

 

 _Two hours before Sam disappeared, he and Dean were getting tossed around a soon-to-be-ex-haunted house by a very cranky poltergeist. This time, it was the belt to a bathrobe that tried to throttle Sam, and the refrigerator threw Dean across the room with a well-timed opened door. It was their fifth hunt that month, October being one of their busy seasons. They were tired and running on fumes, but it was the good kind of tired. The kind of tired where they hadn't talked about Dean's deal or Sam's job offer from the underworld in weeks. The kind of tired where they seriously contemplated sleeping until Thanksgiving but without the soul-crushing edge of despair that had dogged them for so long._

That, more than anything, was what took Dean by surprise. He thought they had at least until the second, the anniversary of...whatever, for things to start getting weird again. Halloween was always a weird time of year for them, even above and beyond the latest nonsense. At least demons had the good sense to lay low while all the lesser crazies ran about making a ruckus. Dean did hate a demon-infested ruckus.

"I call first shower," Sam hollered over his shoulder, not slowing long enough to keep the motel door from bouncing back into Dean's face.

"Use all the hot water, and I will strangle you myself," Dean said to the closing bathroom door.

"That's fine, as long as you remember to get mushrooms on my half," Sam said, muffled by bathroom door and what was likely his shirt being pulled over his head.

"Breadsticks?" Dean asked, sliding down to sit propped against the bathroom door. He propped the phone book on the floor next to him and picked at the laces on his shoes with one hand. "Vinnie's has the cheesey kind."

"Covered or stuffed?" Sam had to raise his voice over the sound of the shower groaning to life.

"Dude, it's a fuckin' phone book, not a recipe book. It's bread with cheese attached. How is that wrong?" Dean finally kicked one shoe off.

"Can I have one of yours?"

"Oh, hell no, you get your own order if you want any." Dean wiggled his toes and dialled Vinnie's. Order placed, he slipped his phone in his pocket and thought very hard about taking his other boot off. Sam was humming to himself, and the muted patter of the shower interrupted by Sam's body was the best sort of white noise. Dean tilted his head back against the bathroom door for just a moment, resting his eyes.

The pounding of Vinnie's delivery boy on the motel door woke him forty-five minutes later. He was on his feet with gun in hand and at the door almost before he was fully conscious, hampered only slightly by his one untied shoe and his clumping, one-shoed gait. He paid the delivery boy one-handed and shuffled the boxes over to the table in a precarious little dance. He could still hear the water running, slapping hard against the tile.

"Sam! Chow's up!" Dean called, flipping the breadstick box open. Covered *and* stuffed. Life was good. "And I *know* you've used all the hot water now. Sleep with one eye open!"

Dean was halfway through his second slice of pizza and had finally managed to toe off his second boot before he ambled over to the bathroom door to pound on it. "Sam! Food! I _will_ eat it all. Stop doing your impression of a drowned rat."

Dean finished chewing and swallowing the second piece of pizza before he whipped out his camera phone and put his shoulder to the door, hoping to catch Sam sleeping standing up in the shower. The latch popped easily, and Dean flung the door open. It caught on Sam's clothes piled in front of the toilet, but Dean just shoved harder to wedge himself into the tiny room. Camera poised and ready, he ripped back the shower curtain, hollering, "Rise and shine, fish boy!"

Dean kept the picture he instinctively snapped - crooked shower curtain, water pounding ugly tile, empty shower. Reflexively, he looked over his shoulder, as if Sam had managed to somehow cram himself between the door and the wall, or maybe behind the toilet. Dean toed at Sam's clothes, but they were no help.

Over the next twelve hours, Dean systematically tore the motel room apart, starting with the shower. Over the next twelve days, Dean systematically tore through the collective knowledge of the hunting world. He called in every favor he was ever owed and made up some new ones for good measure. Missouri and her psychic manifestations, Bela and her hotline to the dead, Bobby and his rituals, Ellen and her network - none of them found a thing.

"Honey, I don't know what to tell you," Missouri said, her voice on the phone tinny and distant. "It's like he was never there at all. He's just...gone."

It took over two more months for Dean to begin to hear and understand. He buried his offering at a crossroads, but no demon showed. He tried summons after summons, but Ruby never showed. Every demon he exorcised, every demon he killed, he asked them all. Nicely, then not so nicely, but none of them had an answer for him. Sam was gone, vanished from behind a closed door that Dean himself had guarded, and no one and nothing could tell Dean what had happened.

Dean never ate a goddamn cheese stick again.

 

***

 

Three years after Sam disappeared, Dean stopped hunting. Not by choice, mind you, but his bum right knee finally blew out. The war hadn't ended when Sam had vanished; things had just gotten a little more disorganized. Dean would never, ever admit it in a thousand years of hellish torture (which he had fully contemplated, thank you very much), but things might actually have been smoother with Sam out of the picture. A ragged band of fiercely independent hunters were never going to work as a seamless team, but without Sam around as a deeply polarizing influence (boy-king of hell or fierce savior of humanity - film at 11!), they were able to hold it together long enough to crush the remnants of the army that had been groomed for Sam's lead. Dean hadn't burned quite as many bridges as he'd thought,

It was a year after that final battle that Dean - on an embarrassingly straightforward dig, salt, and burn - miscalculated the stubbornness of a pair of ghosts and got shoved himself into an open grave. His right leg got stuck between grave wall and the coffin as his body was thrown to the side, and that was all she wrote for his knee. He managed to torch the corpses without setting himself on fire, and then he began the long, slow process of dragging himself to the surface and figuring out what the hell he was going to do now.

If anyone had ever asked Bobby, he would have told them in all honesty that he was surprised that Dean kept on, well, keeping on. With Sam...gone, the demons gone, and the only livelihood - the only _life_ \- Dean had ever known taken away from him, Bobby wasn't entirely sure what Dean would do with himself. If he would find anything to do with himself, or if one day Bobby's phone calls would just stop being answered.

Dean did drop off the radar for about a month, but before Bobby started getting particularly concerned, he got a flyer in the mail. It was for a little weapons shop just on the other side of the Kansas border. He called the number on the bottom immediately.

"Boy, your daddy would reach down from heaven and slap you if he could," he said before Dean could say anything. 'Like The Gun' is just about the most godawful name I've ever heard for a gun shop."

"Thought you'd like that," Dean said, grin apparent even over the phone. "It's not exactly like I'll be doing mainstream advertising, but it tells people who need to know what they need to know. I'd appreciate it if you'd pass the word."

He got off to a bit of a bumpy start, but Dean made a new life for himself as salesman, as teacher, as researcher. Even settled, he never quite stayed still. He collected a handful of failed relationships and a handful more of friends to drop in on from time to time. He built a reputation and even something like a home. He never stopped looking over his shoulder for someone and something that was never there.

 

***

 

Five years after Sam disappeared, Dean started dreaming of him. It wasn't like Dean hadn't been dreaming of him before, but these were different. Before, he dreamed of Sam as he had been - chubby toddler, petulant and fierce boy, awkward and determined teenager, a stranger - a _man_ \- wearing Sam's face that Dean had to learn all over again, then finally a better partner than Dean had ever dreamed he could be. He dreamed of Sam in familiar places, doing familiar things (though not necessarily at the same time - there was that one time he dreamed of Sam at thirteen chasing a black dog with a spatula through Cassie's dorm room, with Bobby sleeping in Cassie's bed which even Dean had to admit was a little odd), but five years out, some of the dreams changed.

It was Sam, but not quite. It was like seeing Sam's reflection in the mirror behind him, when Sam would brush his teeth over Dean's shoulder. Left flipped with right, eyes that never quite met Dean's, that indefinable space between real and reflection.

Sometimes Sam was sitting on the hood of the Impala. Sometimes he was riding a motorcycle (some sort of crotch rocket, not a laid-back beast of a Harley, which was somehow appropriate and always made Dean snicker, even in his dreams). Sometimes he was on a horse. Whatever it was, his feet never touched the ground. Dean didn't particularly enjoy getting introspective about his dreams, but after six months or so of Sam's reflection floating through his brain at night, even Dean could pick up a clue or two.

He called Bobby. He called Ellen. He called Larry, Mohammed, Stephanie, and Vivian. He contacted Bela, who was just as irritating after death as she had been before. He hassled people in chat rooms; he sweet-talked several dozen librarians all across the midwest. It was nothing like his relentless pursuit from five years previous, but it was about as productive. He got answers, but each one was different.

Sam was alive and reaching out to him; Sam was dead and reaching out to him; Sam was stuck between life and death and reaching out to him; someone was using Sam's memory to fuck with Dean; some _thing_ was using Sam's memory to fuck with Dean; Dean had unresolved issues with his father; Dean had unresolved issues with his mother; Dean had unresolved issues with Sam; Dean had unresolved issues with that last bowl of chili he had right before bed.

Dean tried lucid dreaming, a Ouija board, hypnosis, and excessive amounts of Tylenol PM, among other things. Nothing ever changed; it was always not-quite-Sam watching him, not quite there. Eventually Dean stopped trying, and Sam stayed right where he was, floating through Dean's dreams every couple of weeks or so. Dean tried not to be comforted by it.

 

***

 

Seven years after Sam disappeared, Sam came back. Dean took a moment to register, to _realize_ that is it was Sam. To be fair, it started out exactly like half a hundred of his dreams had. In the last few moments before dawn, right when it shifts from "too late" to "too early," Dean stood at the window of his cabin and watched the mist creep across the grass, puddling around the Imapla's wheels, twisting around the hooves of the horse Sam sat on. The coffee pot perked away quietly in the kitchen, and Dean stared, still mostly asleep, at the horse shifting uncomfortably and Sam staring back. Sam looked almost exactly the way he had the last time Dean had seen him, same clothes that were wadded up in the corner of a trunk in the back of a closet in Dean's living room. The faint marks on his throat from the belt had blossomed into full-on bruises, though.

Dean jerked, a full-body recoil, when he realized Sam's eyes were the right way round. "Jesus fuck sweet jesus fuck _Christo_ sweet fucking hell," he muttered, out of the door and pointing the Colt at Sam's heart as fast as his leg would let him.

Sam's eyes stayed the way they were - human and on their proper sides - and Dean's good leg almost gave way when those eyes got that irritated little crease between them that Dean had not seen in seven years. Sam snapped something in a language Dean didn't recognize, but he recognized his own name from Sam's lips. He didn't notice the tears leaking down his face, hearing his name in Sam's voice and seeing that pissy little expression he knew better than his own name, but the gun never wavered.

"Pizza got cold. Mind telling me where you've been?" Dean's voice was steady.

Sam opened his mouth, visibly paused, then said slowly, "How long, Dean? How long has it been?"

"Seven years. Like I said, mind telling me what you've been up to?"

Sam's face crumpled. He hitched a few deep breaths that caught in his throat, then found his voice again. "Seven years. You're safe, then. You're okay."

Dean actually had to take a minute to figure out what Sam was talking about. "One hundred percent hellfire free. No need to keep a deal when the guy I brought back from the dead up and left. But that was a long time ago I will ask you one more time - _where have you been_?"

Sam smiled humorlessly. "Tir na nOg. Lyonnesse. Ablach. Mag Mell. I never really saw a welcome sign." His horse shifted restlessly. "Listen, can we finish the questioning in a minute? The horse leaves at dawn, with or without me."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "So get off." He still didn't lower the gun.

Sam's forehead creased again. "I can't. Not by myself." He rattled off the first half of his favorite exorcism ritual, said the name of God in six different languages, and finished off with, "and when I was four, I called every pillow fort we made Castle Greyskull and spent a week only answering to Battlecat. Dean, _please_. You have to claim me." He flicked his eyes to the horizon. "Don't let me -"

But by that point, Dean was already moving, the Colt dropped to the ground. He wrapped one hand around Sam's hands twisted in the horse's mane and looped the other arm around Sam's back. The horse, now almost writhing in place, shoved hard against him, but Dean clung to Sam and _yanked_. Sam budged only slightly. The horse started, then tried to walk away. Sam started to fall.

Time telescoped out, and as Sam fell, Dean could feel him _shift_ in his arms. Bear, snake, fire, ice, the demon that had worn Sam's face - Dean held them all. The bear dug its claws into Dean's side; the snake bit his neck. He burned and he froze, but he didn't let go. He closed his eyes and buried his face in what he believed was Sam's neck and muttered, "If this only works if you've knocked me up, I'm letting you go."

Sam - really, truly, actually Sam - gasped a laugh and said, " _Dean_ ," and they tumbled to the ground, each wrapped around each.

When Sam's feet touched the earth, he jerked in Dean's arms and _howled_. Dean still didn't let go, and he watched the years fly across Sam's face. Seven years in an instant, piling one on the other in worry lines, laugh lines, new scars. After a long moment, Sam raised his head to meet Dean's eyes, still trembling slightly.

"How long?" Dean asked.

Sam shrugged a little. "One night. Three hundred years. Like I said, it was a little hard to tell."

Dean touched Sam's face carefully and laughed, a little wild. "Are you trying to tell me you ditched me for seven years to go on an all-night bender with a bunch of fairies?"

"Something like that?" They stared at each other for a long moment, then laughed till they cried.

After they detangled themselves and shoved their way to their knees, Sam sort of folded into Dean, clutching him all over again. "You're okay. You're safe. You're not going anywhere," he muttered into Dean's shoulder, his own hitching slightly.

Dean pressed his face against Sam's hair, breathing him in. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here." He didn't say _and so are you_ with words, but he couldn't stop touching Sam, couldn't stop checking to see if Sam was still really there under his hands, breathing and alive. "You were gone for a really long time, Sammy."

Sam raised his head from Dean's shoulder, face sticky with tears and a little snotty, and grinned at Dean. "Yeah, but they can't have me anymore." He wiped his face on Dean's sleeve, and Dean shoved at him, just a little, even as he held him and kept checking that he hadn't vanished. "You claimed me, and they can't take me back." He threw his head back and yelled. "You hear that? I'm staying. You can't take me back. I'm not yours anymore."

"Mine." Dean mouthed the word. This time, it was Sam who touched Dean's face with hesitant, careful fingers. "Mine," Dean said, giving voice to the word. Sam's grin spread even wider. " _Mine_ ," he said, even louder.

"Likewise," Sam muttered, and somewhere between that breath and the next, they fell into a kiss seven years in the waiting.

 

***

 

 _"They asked me, Dean, and I said yes. God help me Dean, I said yes. The veil was thin, and I asked at midnight. I didn't know, but I asked, and they answered. 'What would you give,' they asked, and I said 'everything.' I said, 'anything.' And God help me, I meant it. They asked, 'would you give up the world? would you give up the world for him?', and I said yes. I said yes, and I meant it. You can't kill what's not there, and without me, you wouldn't need the deal. Gone, I couldn't die, couldn't lead hell, couldn't make you kill me. They asked, and I went. And I'm not sorry."_

"But you came back."

"Yeah. I did."

 

***

 

Seven years after Sam disappeared, Dean woke up late in the afternoon wrapped in and around and under Sam. It was dark, but he could feel Sam breathing, feel the shallow hitch of his chest under Dean's hands. He licked his lips and tasted Sam. He sucked in a deep breath and smelled Sam, smelled Sam and him together. He could hear the soft sounds Sam made, still asleep and pressing close. He closed his eyes and smiled.

 

***

 

Seven years and one day after Sam disappeared, Dean stopped counting.


End file.
